Page 24 of How to Ruin Your Ex's Wedding
You hate the pedestal.
Maybe. But that doesn’t mean it’s bad.
It means he doesn’t knowyou.Not the real you anyway.
He knows enough.
He knows the you that you’ve pretended to be with him.
It doesn’t matter. Whatever he knows, it’s enough that he wants to marry me and take care of me. Plus, we never argue. He caters to my every need. He’s the opposite of Pax, and that’s what I need.
Pax.
Stop thinking about Pax. He doesn’t matter.
The acid rolls in my stomach. I pop a few more antacids, then look around for something else to occupy my time. My mother’s tell-all book waves to me from where I’d tossed it on the coffee table. It’s bound to be filled with half-truths and exaggerated tales, begging me to let it fill my idle time. I’m not going to read it. To prove my point, I grab it and put it under the mattress in the guest room. Then I take it back out, put it in a brown paper bag, wrap it with packing tape, and shove it back between the mattress and box spring. I don’t need for it to be easily available when I’m feeling weak.
Like now.
It’s funny, I always thought my relationship with my mom was great. Until I went to public high school and realized what other mothers did. And high school girls didn’t even like their mothers most of the time. Thus began the divide and we’ve never been able to bridge the gap since.
It’s not until I begin to pace that I realize I really need to take my mind off everything for a while. I’m too wired to meditate. So, I succumb to weakness, which I hate about myself, and do the other thing I hate about myself. I make and then eat an entire box of sugar-free JELL-O. Then lock myself in my office and watch reruns of my talk show from when I was younger. From a time before I was jaded. Back when I was happy. Because what they say is correct: innocenceisbliss.
* * *
An email from my ghostwriter arrives an hour and a half into my pity party, saving me from further self-condemnation. When I spend too much time revisiting the past, I have a tendency to spiral down. And by past, I mean everything from my pre-Hunter days.
I send the file to the printer, noticing the chapters from the ghostwriter are about the move from Los Angeles to Seattle, navigating the sudden departure from the glitz and glam in the public eye to public school and life in suburbia. In some ways, I think it was my mother’s way ofpunishingme for wanting to take a leave of absence from acting. A decision she did not support. So, she found the furthest thing from it and forced me along for the ride.
Of course, it didn’t impact her life so much as that she just didn’t have access to the social circles of the industry. Otherwise, her days barely changed, still consisting of managing me; making sure I was where I should be when I should be. Which, after moving, was much more easily achieved than before, until people figured out who I really was.
We should have known it wouldn’t be easy. There’s only so far that hair dye and fake glasses can get you before your mannerisms or something else indicative of your personal character calls you out. For the first time in my life, I wasn’t playing a role or another person or a caricature of myself. I was having to be me, and at that point I wasn’t sure who that person was. Which made it easy to slip into various personas until one or two eventually stuck.
I’m certain that I still have a crisis of identity to this day. It shouldn’t surprise me, or anyone for that matter, that I re-invented myself with Hunter. It’s why I’m so bothered by him calling memy queen. It’s not me. It’s his idea of me.
My fault.
I’m the one who has perpetuated the myth, allowing him to believe he knows who I am, when really he only knows the small piece of me I’ve allowed to break free and be shown. Crystal is the only person in my life who truly knows me. And she isn’t afraid to call me on my shit, in her own passive way.
I’m an enigma to everyone else. Purposefully.
Except Pax.
Well, sure, but Pax isn’t in my life, so it doesn’t matter.
Oh, pashaw.
The pages from the ghostwriter finish printing and I settle down on the couch with my favorite red pen to rip it to shreds. While a small part of me enjoys recounting stories from my past and allowing another person to turn that into something worthy of audience amusement, a larger part of me wants to make sure the portrayals are accurate without so much of the embellishment that is favored in the entertainment industry.
My publicist loves to remind me:The smallest detail to you, about you, may be fascinating to a fan.
However, the details that I don’t need fed to the public are my feelings toward Pax as we journeyed from my high school graduation to living together, moving back to LA, marriage, reality show, and divorce. Against my better judgment, I allowed the ghostwriter to make copies of select journal entries of mine from that time period. A time when I was known to be melodramatic and wordy. This ghostwriter loves to play up thetumultuouslove affair aspect that ended so public and tragic on the front lawn of our coastal Los Angeles townhome.
As such, I “X” out more than a third of what she has sent because it’s too vivid. Too accurate. Too telling. I don’t need people knowing my innermost thoughts. What’s the point of reinventing yourself and becoming someone new if you are just going to send out written invitations to the inner workings of the person you were before?
6
Pax
